Tom Cunningham is managing director at Worcester tax advisory firm Cunningham and Associates, LLC. Email him at TCunningham@JEC-LLC.com.
Updated: September 19, 2022
5 things
5 Things I know about ... Strategic planning
By Tom Cunningham
As the calendar year ends, many businesses will turn their sights on planning for the upcoming year. Below are five methods used by top-performing organizations for setting transparent objectives, creating achievable goals, and implementing dynamite strategic plans.
5) Set goals. Goals are the lifeblood of planning. You won’t hit your target without knowing where you’re aiming. The SMART goal method is an excellent start. SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely.
4) Challenge those goals. Take a hard look to see if your initial goals challenge you, your department, and your organization to stretch. It is essential to set achievable goals, but you shouldn’t accept being complacent. Creating stretch goals is a means to push yourself and your organization out of the comfort zone. Challenge yourself or those around you.
3) Align individual, departmental, and organizational goals. You can ensure everyone in your department or organization is working to achieve the same results by aligning individual objectives and departmental initiatives to organizational goals. Incentivizing the completion of these efforts can add some extra fuel to the motivational fire. Incentives come in many forms, such as employee perks, days off, or bonuses.
2) Share your goals across the organization through a shared vision. As the iconic rock band Kiss said, “Shout it, shout it, shout it out loud, and everybody shout it now!” Everyone in your organization should know the goals. Shout them loudly and often. Post them anywhere that can be seen. Share your vision until it’s everyone’s vision.
1) Report on your goals - Reporting creates transparency and accountability. Make sure to identify key performance indicators or important information to track progress toward your goals and report on them. KPIs can come in the form of financial, quality, customer satisfaction, employee, process, or any other metric important to the organization. Once reporting is in place, ensure you act on the reporting, pivot and adjust when needed, and respond when reporting shows progress is behind or ahead of schedule.
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